The Congress was
undoubtedly not the film I was expecting it to be, and if the disc’s box art is
all you go by, you will certainly be as surprised as I was. The film advertises itself as a sci-fi
speculation on the future of cinema and the detriment this will be to artistic
integrity, but instead transitions into an apocalyptic warning of the powers of
mass consumerism and the substitution of mass media for the pleasures of
reality. I wouldn’t go so far to say
that I think that the transition is an entirely successful one, and the film
does meander into some unnecessarily abstract territory, but if you are willing
to deal with an unnecessarily obtuse third act, this may be the film for you.
Our main character is a fictionalized self-portrayal of
actress Robin Wright (best known for her role as Buttercup in The Princess Bride), who has left acting
behind to raise her children. However,
Miramount Studios (I see what they did there…) offers her a deal for the chance
to become a relevant star again by selling a digitally animated copy of
herself to the studio so that they may keep making films ad infinitum with her
as the face of it all. In order to pay
for treatments to her son’s chronic illness, Robin agrees. This all takes roughly forty-five minutes to
play out, and is probably the film’s strongest third, establishing Robin as a
sympathetic character faced with circumstances that force her to bend to the
whims of a manipulative entertainment mogul.
However, this is where the film gets weird. Flash forward twenty years, and Robin visits
the Futurological Congress, where everyone has taken a hallucinogenic drug that
makes them an animated cartoon. The
visual shift is jarring to say the least, and the animation starts off as a Technicolor
assault on the eyes, with bright colors and bending lines creating the
cinematic equivalent to an LSD trip.
This is also where the film shows its hand, describing films as a dead
medium and depicting the horror of a future where life is nothing more than
escapist entertainment that entirely supplants reality. It is sometimes painfully blunt in getting
this message across, with a pivotal scene clearly paralleling Apple-style press
conferences to cultish fanaticism, but it serves its purpose.
The final third of the film, though, gets even stranger, as
it seemingly abandons its message in favor of using the abstract nature of its
animation to the fullest extent, taking wild narrative detours that really
serve no other purpose than to show us some weird shit. One might be tempted to think that this
absurdity was leading to a grander point, but unfortunately the film blew that
load by the halfway point, and the rest feels all too much like padding. Robin herself doesn’t even feel like a
substantial character by the end of it all, completely consumed by the film’s
attempts to use visual absurdity to convey the absurdity of mass
entertainment. The film is mostly
running on fumes for the last twenty minutes, and even the creative animation
cannot save it, because by that point the strangeness of it all is nothing but
white noise.
That said, though, The
Congress is an alright film. It’s
overlong and pretentious to be sure, but the parts that work do work decently
well, and I’m willing to forgive the lackluster third act in favor of its
strong opening and solid second act. If
you find the experience becomes too tiresome by the ninety minute mark, I
wouldn’t blame you for wanting to shut it off, but that first ninety minutes is
a decent enough film to warrant a viewing.
Can animation and live acting effectively combine to make
symbolic points in cinema? Leave your
thoughts in the comments below.
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